Chapter 4 - The Red Hour
10:57 AM.
The air inside the main security control room beneath the estate was dead silent.
Marco Rivera sat surrounded by forty high-definition monitors displaying live feeds from every corner of the property—the perimeter walls, the northern woods, the underground parking garage, and the grand driveway.
Alessandro stood behind him, a heavy leather tactical vest strapped over his black shirt, a custom black semi-automatic pistol holstered at his hip.
“The fire suppression timer Victoria mentioned,” Alessandro said. “Where is the relay?”
“Located in Junction Box 4 near the east boiler room,” Marco said, pointing his pen at a circuit diagram on his screen. “It’s rigged to a wireless receiver operating on a low-frequency radio signal. When Valenti’s lead vehicle hits the outer perimeter gate, the signal triggers, flooding this room with chemical foam and tripping the master circuit breakers.”
“Disconnect it?” Marco asked, his fingers hovering over a manual override switch.
“No,” Alessandro said, his voice dropping into a dark, terrible whisper. “Let it trigger.”
Marco paused, looking up at his Don in surprise. “If I let it trigger, the main gate electronics will fail-open. They’ll drive four armored SUVs straight up the main driveway to the front doors.”
“That’s where I want them,” Alessandro said.
He reached down and pulled a red master key from a chain around his neck. He inserted it into a keyhole marked SYSTEM PROTOCOL: ZERO.
“Valenti thinks he’s walking into a house with dark cameras and blind guards,” Alessandro said, his cold blue eyes reflecting the glow of the monitors. “He thinks he’s attacking a wounded wolf in a dark cave. I want him inside the courtyard before he realizes the cave is full of gunpowder.”
“And Miss Hale?” Marco asked quietly.
“Leave her in the library,” Alessandro ordered. “If Valenti’s men reach that room, they’ll kill her first so she can't testify about the agreement. Let her see the kind of men she chose over me.”
On the central monitor, a thick black line of heavy SUVs suddenly appeared on the rainy access road leading out of the northern woods. They were driving fast, their headlights off, their blacked-out windows gleaming like insect shells under the heavy downpour.
10:59 AM.
“They’re fifty yards from the main gate,” Marco announced, his voice steady despite the sweat dripping down his temple. “Three... two... one...”
A loud, metallic CLANG echoed through the floorboards as the circuit breakers in the basement tripped.
Half the monitors in the control room instantly went black. Red emergency strobe lights began flashing in the hallways above, casting long, bloody shadows against the marble walls. The muffled hiss of high-pressure chemical foam spray sounded from the boiler room next door.
On the remaining backup monitors, powered by the independent battery bank, the massive wrought-iron gates at the entrance of the estate slowly swung open as the safety fail-safe activated.
The four black SUVs surged through the open gates, their tires spraying gravel and mud, screaming up the long, curving driveway toward the front steps of the mansion.
Alessandro unholstered his pistol. He pulled back the slide with a sharp, crisp CLACK.
“Marco,” Alessandro said quietly.
“Sir?”
“Send the signal to the California team. Make sure Emma and the child’s flight leaves O’Hare airport in twenty minutes.”
“It’s already done, Don Alessandro. They are on the runway.”
May you like
Alessandro nodded once. He turned toward the reinforced stairs leading up to the grand foyer.
“Shut the gates behind them,” Alessandro ordered. “And turn off the emergency lights. Let’s show Dominic Valenti how we welcome guests in the dark.”
